Queen Mary 2 short voyage

Sail Date:
October 2012

Destination:
Europe - British Isles & Western

Embarkation:
Southampton

our comments were:
We embarked Queen Mary 2 quickly and efficiently in Southampton as I am a platinum member and one of the perques is you do not have to queue. I noticed the embarkation hall was extremely full and very busy when we arrived.

Our cabin was spotless and our luggage was already waiting for us when we opened the cabin door. There was the usual complementary bottle of sparkling wine waiting for us which is a very nice touch by Cunard. Our cabin steward soon knocked on our door and introduced himself and he did a marvellous job keeping our cabin clean and tidy all the voyage.

The ship herself was as usual spotless although having cruised many times on QM2 I was a little disappointed as I thought from all the hype QM2 had been massively refurbished. I couldn't see a great deal that had been changed there were still some "holes" in the floor in the atrium that you went down, and the carpets in many public areas were the same.

We dined in the More
Britannia Restaurant on second Service and what a disappointment that was. The first evening our waiter got everything mixed up including the cutlery it was so bad we asked to be moved to a different table which the maitre d did for the second night onwards.The service then resumed its normal excellent standard that I expect from Cunard. Having said that a lot of the waiters seemed to be training as quite a lot of them couldn't find the table the maitre d had directed them to show you to especially at breakfast. The food on the other hand was very poor quality and choice was limited not what I am used to in the Britannia restaurant. We ate one night in Kings Court which was like dining in a transport cafe jeans and tee shirts seemed to be the dress code and food was like a self service motorway outlet.

The shows were good, bad and indifferent we saw an excellent singer from Birmingham who had starred in the Lion King, Roy Walker who really is past his sell by date and a production show which was good. Apassionata the other production show we did not see as we had seen this show for the last 6 years and we were bored of it. The shows are not exciting certainly not a Las Vegas type or a stage show like Hairspray. The Royal Court Theatre is beautiful and its a shame it does not see better entertainment.

On the whole I think Cunard are going to have to do away with all these so called cheap cruises if they want to keep their 5 star reputation as clearly standards have dropped considerably over the last few years and other cruise lines are offering so much more for your money. Less